No plans to join China-led devel­op­ment bank, says Ja­pan

Ja­pan on Tues­day ruled out any im­me­di­ate plan to join the Bei­jing­backed Asian In­fra­struc­ture In­vest­ment Bank (AIIB), cat­e­gor­i­cally deny­ing a news re­port that its am­bas­sador to China said Tokyo is likely to take part.

The Fi­nan­cial Times re­ported that Masato Kit­era, Tokyo’s en­voy in Bei­jing, said in an in­ter­view Ja­pan is likely to join the AIIB within a few months, a move that would leave Wash­ing­ton as the only big hold­out.

But Chief Cabi­net Sec­re­tary Yo- shi­hide Suga said Tues­day the am­bas­sador had not made any such com­ment and Ja­pan’s po­si­tion on the AIIB had not changed.

“I have been in­formed that it is not true that Am­bas­sador Kit­era made such re­marks fore­cast­ing (Ja­pan’s) par­tic­i­pa­tion,” Suga told a news con­fer­ence.

The re­port comes just be­fore the end-March dead­line China has set for par­tic­i­pa­tion in the bank as a found­ing mem­ber.

The UK, Australia, France, Ger­many, Italy and Rus­sia have all said they in­tend to join the Bei­jing-head­quar­tered US$50 bil­lion in­sti­tu­tion, de­spite skep­ti­cism in Wash­ing­ton and Tokyo. China’s neigh­bor and long-time foe Tai­wan said Mon­day it would also make a for­mal ap­pli­ca­tion to join.

“Ja­pan is du­bi­ous about whether (the AIIB) would be prop­erly gov­erned or whether it would dam­age other cred­i­tors,” Suga said. Ja­pan is a key player in the Asian Devel­op­ment Bank (ADB), which would be a ri­val.

“Any­way, I think it’s im­pos­si­ble for Ja­pan to take part to­day,” the gov­ern­ment’s top spokesman said, adding that Tokyo would work to­gether with Wash­ing­ton, its top ally, and other coun­tries to ask Bei­jing for clar­i­fi­ca­tion.

The new multi­na­tional lender is seen as a threat to the World Bank and the ADB, two in­sti­tu­tions that are heav­ily in­flu­enced by the U.S. and Ja­pan.

Wash­ing­ton has been left in­creas­ingly iso­lated in its op­po­si­tion to the AIIB, which op­po­nents claim could end up as a Chi­nese ve­hi­cle that has low stan­dards on gov­er­nance, the en­vi­ron­ment and so­cial is­sues.